A covenant designed to anchor an effort to increase Pre-K opportunities for Memphis City Schools students was unveiled Monday during the Rainbow Push Coalition salute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Monumental Baptist Church at 704 South Parkway.

Dr. L. LaSimba Gray Jr., President of the Rainbow Push Coalition, outlined the initiative. Coalition partners have agreed to work with MCS to help establish 100 new classrooms for pre-Kindergarten education by 2011.

According to the covenant, the partners will make available suitable space for classrooms in their businesses, churches, social and civic buildings and daycare centers.

Listed as covenant partners are Rev. Dwight Montgomery, president of the Memphis Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Rev. Carl Greer, president of the Memphis Baptist Ministerial Association, Rev. Steve Dodson, vice moderator for the Zion District Association, and Dr. Erin Hamer and Dr. Carolyn Harvey representing Memphis City Schools.

Harvey helped put the need into perspective. She said 75 percent of brain development is completed by age 6.

In pitching the covenant, Gray said approximately 8,000 at-risk children could benefit from the pre-K experience annually.

“We know that the intolerable rate of student failure, student drop-out and student poor performance will only get worse without the impact of a voluntary pre-kindergarten experience,” he said.

The covenant says that Supt. Kriner Cash has correctly identified the problem and “proposed a viable, workable solution; a voluntary Pre-K Program that will bridge the financial gaps between many families and the pre-K experience.”

Gray read the entire covenant, which includes this commitment: “We will become citizen lobbyists for the continued funding of the voluntary Pre-K Program.”

Citizen lobbyists were defined as those who “work voluntarily for a cause they believe in and enjoy the success of resolution of a problem.”